Is photo recovery possible?

Yes

No

Now, because we have a relatively small number of matches taking place in each round (I'm counting the group stages as three rounds of 16 matches each) I don't think the usual pools system will work too well, so this is a modified version.

In this, you will be able to make predictions for all the matches (not all at once! ), and you will say (by posting to the thread) whether you think the match between country X and country Y will be a win for X, or for Y, or a draw. If your prediction turns out to be correct, you get the points associated with that result. Of course, after the group stages matches cannot be drawn, as extra time and, if needs be, penalties are used to make sure someone actually wins. Also, in a tournament like this, the home/away distinction isn't really valid for most matches, so we'll replace that with one based on the FIFA World Rankings, as they stand going into these finals. So in this case, if X is ranked higher than Y, and they win, that will be deemed to be the equivalent of a home win. Whereas if Y wins it will be considered an away win. And don't worry - I'll provide all the necessary ranking information for you in the thread.

The points you'll get for a correct prediction will be:

'Home' Win - 1pt

Draw - 1.5pts

'Away' Win - 2pts.

And at the end of the tournament, the person who has accumulated the most points will be declared the winner. Simple enough?

Okay, then - the only rule is that your prediction for any given match must be posted to this thread before the scheduled kick-off time. Anyone can join in at any time, though obviously you have more chance of winning if you're in from the start.

At or before the beginning of each 'round' I'll post a list of the matches coming up, with their dates and kick-off times. And after the completetion of a round I'll post a table of current standings in our pools competition.

Okay, I think that covers everything. Any questions, feel free to ask. Otherwise, let's get this under way. The list of first round matches will follow in my next post.

Just a reminder to everyone here - we're actually treating all draws as the same - no score/score/etc. - they're all just drawn matches for our purposes. I was going to separate them originally, as per normal pools, but when I looked at the match statistics for the last few tournaments, it looked as though the odds would work more evenly if I lumped them both together.

Well, fair enough - it does have a certain logic to it. And it will put my scoring system to the test - I was trying to make sure that no-one could simply maximize their points by using a system, such as saying 'all matches score-draw', or whatever. We'll see if I succeeded!